• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.47-55
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• 2016

The proliferation of the Internet and related technologies has led to a new form of distribution channels, namely online retailers. The conventional offline and the new online retailers have different transaction costs perceived by the consumers in the following perspectives: the accessibility to the product information, the traffic cost and the opportunity cost for the time to visit the store, the delivery time and the possibility of 'touch and feel' to test the quality of the product. In particular, the online retailers have lower distribution cost structure in that they do not have physical stores, which results in lower selling price. Thus they continuously offer price competition against offline retailers using the lower selling cost as competitive weapon. Moreover the emergence of the social commerce is likely to intensify the competition between the online and offline retailers. To survive in this fierce competition, the offline retailers are trying to defend their business interests by sticking to offline transaction in anticipation of increased customer loyalty, customer's preference for 'touch and feel' style shopping, and others. Despite of these efforts, customers who touch and feel a product in an offline store but purchase the product through an online retailer are increasing. To protect such customers, recently, some of the offline retailers began to provide the mobile discount service (MDS) which enables the offline customers to purchase a product at a discounted price through the mobile applications. In business competitions, the price discount strategy is usually considered to secure more market share at the cost of lower profit. In this study, however, we analyze the effect of MDS as a weapon for securing more profit. To do this, we set up a game model between the online and offline retailers which incorporates the effect of the MDS. By numerically analyzing the Nash equilibrium of the game, some managerial implications for using the MDS for more profit are discussed.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.194-200
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• 2009

This study provides a heuristic algorithm to solve the locating problem of repair service centers (RSCs). To enhance the customer service level with more satisfaction and quicker responsiveness, the locating problem of RSCs has become one of the important issues in reverse supply chain management. This problem is formulated as a zero-one mixed integer programming in which an exiting distributor will be considered to be an un-capacitated repair service center for the objective of cost-minimizing. Since logistical costs are highly interrelated with the multinational location of distributors and RSCs, the fixed cost for setting a repair service center, variable cost, transportation cost, and exchange rates are considered in this study. Recognizing the selection of un-capacitated RSCs' locations is a combinatorial optimization problem and is a zero-one mixed integer programming with NP-hard complexity, we provide a heuristic algorithm named as incremental cost matrix procedure (ICMP) to simplify the solving procedure. By using the concise and structural cost matrix, ICMP can efficiently screen the potential location with cost advantage and effectively decide which distributor should be a RSC. Results obtained from the numerical experiments conducted in small scale problem have shown the fact that ICMP is an effective and efficient heuristic algorithm for solving the RSCs locating problem. In the future, using the extended ICMP to solve problems with larger industrial scale or problems with congestion effects caused by the variation of customer demand and the restriction of the RSC capacity is worth a further investigation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.117-129
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• 2009

The bullwhip effect is known as the significant factor which causes unnecessary inventory, lost sales or cost increase in supply chains. Therefore, the causes of the bullwhip effect must be examined and removed. In this paper, we develop two analytical tools for the bullwhip effect control in supply chains. First, we develop the quantitative models for computing the bullwhip effect in a three-stage supply chain consisted of a single retailer, a single distributor and a single manufacturer when the fixed-interval replenishment policy is applied at each stage. The quantitative models are developed under the different conditions for the demand forecasting and share of customer demand information. They are validated through the computational experiments. Second, we develop a simulation-based decision support system for the bullwhip effect control in a more diverse dynamic supply chain environment. The system includes a what-if analysis function to examine the effects of varying input parameters such as operating policies and costs on the bullwhip effect.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.481-491
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• 2016

This study analyzed the customer's revisit concepts and storytelling by restaurant customers to identify the elements that can attract the attention of customers. The restaurant concept or advertising, restaurant decor will also have to change to emphasize the comparative advantage of the features in the menu of a restaurant or other restaurants / service that tells a story. Membership cards or money, or the same convenience and use of the restaurant non-monetary 'transition cost' can compensate for the negative emotions and low satisfaction level of restaurant customers and help them choose to revisit the restaurant. Therefore, if such a transition takes full account of the effects of the cost to the customer, it can be used as an effective means. In class restaurants, such as the food and customer service, the increased levels of the restaurant atmosphere and empirical elements, such as store concept and physical environment, can improve the positive consumer sentiment, strengthen the customer satisfaction and have a positive effect on the customers' revisit intention. It is also important to improve the level of visual texture using light. In addition, positive consumer sentiment can be induced using the store concept, the physical environment, and experiential elements. In other words, membership cards, mileage points, and various financial and non-financial inducements as a marketing tool will have a positive impact on the customer's revisit intention.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.79-90
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• 2008

With the corporate environment nowadays being surrounded by plenty of information, the sharing of information among businesses through mutual cooperation tops the list of hot issues. Predictions of demands from the customer, business, or consumer by sharing information can affect the inventory and order production system. However, notwithstanding the importance of sharing information, empirical studies on quantitative use of information still remain insufficient in spite of many a discussion now being made on the sharing of information. This paper proposes to examine the ways meteorological information may affect the rises in the achievements of supply chains in distributive businesses, the kind of information that noticeably affects the consumer behavioral patterns in the distributive businesses but rarely perceived as a form of information shared by businesses. This study is based on a model in which meteorological information has been added as the one used to predict demands, after the beer distribution game has been modified to fit the current status, and simulations under an assumptive situation, where decisions are made on a daily basis, were conducted 50 times for a period of 1000 days for the generalization of the results, while at the same time a Duncan Test was conducted to determine the threshold to use the meteorological information that will be most profitable to the retailer, wholesaler, supplier and the supply chain as a whole. Our findings indicate that corporations have thresholds that vary from business to business depending upon the ratio of backlog costs to inventory costs. At the same time, our findings also show that there existed effective thresholds depending upon the ratio of backlog costs to inventory costs for the performance of the overall supply chain.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.249-255
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• 2017

The domestic tourism industry mostly relies on quantitative surveys for customer satisfaction. However, customer participation of the questionnaires is extremely low and the improvement of the dissatisfactory factors is not being performed promptly. In this paper, we propose a new topic map system and prove its empirical effectiveness to improve the accuracy of customer feedback information and the efficiency of the analysis process. The topic map system is a system for analyzing large amounts of customer feedback data in real time. It uses text mining and ontology techniques by integrating data collected over a certain period from real-time SNS and quantitative data obtained from existing survey systems. The effect after improving the analyzed factors of dissatisfaction is also a new and innovative evaluation system for monitoring customer satisfaction in real time. The classification based on this integrated data is a classification system that is specific to the product or the customer. According to this classification, it is possible to measure the effect of the recognition and improvement of the complaint factor in real time on the topic map system. This provides a sophisticated prioritization of the improvement factors and enables customer satisfaction quality control as a PDCA feedback system. In addition, the survey period and costs are greatly shortened, and responses can be more precise to the existing survey method. As a practical application, this system is applied to the largest H travel agency in Korea to prove the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.565-565
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• 2004

Due to limitation of resources and increasing concerns about environment, reverse logistics has received growing attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose three types of reverse logistics networks based on reuse of returnable containers, materials recycling process and remanufacturing for parts reuse. First, the sender in the re-usable item network supplies containers for the recipient and orders either new containers from external supplier or returnable containers cleaned from the container depot. Second, the recycling center in the proposed recycling network collects either end of life products from customer or faulty goods from manufacturer, collected products are dismantled into materials and materials go into recycling process. Finally, the manufacturer in the proposed remanufacturing network has two alternatives for supplying parts: either ordering the required parts to external supplier or overhauling disassembled parts and bringing them back 'as new' conditions. In this product recovery environment, we build optimal order quantity models to minimize the total logistics costs related to reverse logistics network. The validity of the proposed model is investigated through comprehensive computational experiments.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2014

This paper considers an inbound ordering and outbound dispatching problem for multi-products and multi-vehicles in a third-party distribution center. The demands are dynamic over a discrete and finite time horizon, and replenishing orders are shipped in various transportation modes and the freight cost is proportional to the number of vehicles used. Any mixture of products is loaded onto any type of vehicles. The objective of the study is to simultaneously determine the inbound lot-sizes, the outbound dispatching sizes, and the types and numbers of vehicles used to minimize total costs, which consist of inventory holding cost and freight cost. Delivery time window is one of the general dispatching policies between a third-party distribution center and customers in practice. In the policy, each demand of product for a customer must be delivered within the time window without penalty cost. We derive mixed integer programming models for the dispatching policy with delivery time windows and on-time delivery dispatching policy, respectively and analyze the effect on a dispatching policy with delivery time windows by comparing with on-time delivery dispatching policy using various computational experiments.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.054-074
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• 2023

With the advent of the '4th Industrial Revolution', digitalization using AI (Artificial Intelligence), big data, IoT (Internet of Things), cloud computing and mobile is accelerating across all industries and global companies have fundamentally reorganized customer experiences, business models, and operations centering on digital transformation. Business innovation drives productivity improvement, process simplification, price, competitiveness and sustainable expansion. Whether digital transformation will be necessary for the current industrial environment is no longer important, and how quickly companies achieve digitalization has emerged as the utmost crucial element in industrial continuity. As non-face-to-face and remote technologies have begun in earnest, and accelerated in the pharmaceutical industry. They are looking for ways to provide value, generate profits, improve efficiency, and sustain the future. Compared to other industries, the pharmaceutical-related sectors have shown high interest in digital transformation especially to reduce costs and meet the challenge of delivering products during the pandemic environment.

• International Journal of Reliability and Applications
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.79-95
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• 2003

Manufacturers collect and analyze field reliability data to enhance the quality and reliability of their products and to improve customer satisfaction. To reduce the data collecting and maintenance costs, the amount of data maintained for evaluating product quality and reliability should be minimized. With this in mind, some industrial companies assemble warranty databases by gathering data from different sources for a particular time period. This “marginal count failure data” does not provide (i) the number of failures by when the product entered service, (ii) the number of failures by product age, or (iii) information about the effects of the operating season or environment. This article describes a method for estimating age-based claim rates from marginal count failure data. It uses covariates to identify variations in claims relative to variables such as manufacturing characteristics, time of manufacture, operating season or environment. A Poisson model is presented, and the method is illustrated using warranty claims data for two electrical products.